File-Sharing Site The Pirate Bay Attacked

Talk about a tough couple weeks for fans of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay. First British Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were ordered by the courts to block all access to the site. Then, the Hague Court in Holland did the same. As if that legal barrage wasn’t enough, now

According to recent reports, the cyber-assault on The Pirate Bay started early Wednesday morning. The attack is reportedly a distributed denial of service, or DDoS strike; this means that someone has engineered a considerable number of computers to bombard The Pirate Bay with data requests, overwhelming and ultimately breaking the system.

Shortly after the assault began, The Pirate Bay revealed on its site that it was “under a quite big ddos attack,” and while the culprit remained unknown an anonymous spokesperson said “we have our suspicions.” The spokesperson went on to promise that its “tech guru,” someone by the name of “Winston Q,” would soon be addressing the issue.

A few hours later a Pirate Bay representative said that it appeared the threat was dissipating, though in actual fact accessing the site continued to become more and more difficult.

At least one ‘hacktivist’ group has already come out to say it had nothing to do with the attack on The Pirate Bay. “It is not a legitimate protest for anyone to be involved with nor does it fall within our objectives,” said a member of the well-known hacker group AnonAteam.

“Anyone involved in the attack should stop. It is our understanding [hacking group] Anonymous have no involvement in this attack.”

Ironically, The Pirate Bay last week criticized supporters who organized a DDoS attack on one of the five British ISPs blocking access to the site, calling the campaign a form of censorship.

It remains unclear who could be behind this most recent attack on The Pirate Bay, though experts suggest it’s possible a pro-copyright group is responsible.